Not had a great deal of time to look at this but you might have heard the BBC plugging the IFS research that tells us that:

Benefits cuts ‘cost average family £489 a year’

 

Lower income families have been hit the worst as a percentage of their income the BBC insist on telling us….

Low-income working-age households have been hit hardest, losing the most as a percentage of their income.

 

And only halfway down the report do we get nearer the real truth…

James Browne, a senior research economist at IFS and co-author of the report said: “Whichever way you cut it, low-income households with children and the very richest households have lost out significantly from the changes as a percentage of their incomes.

 

But that is not what the BBC has been highlighting or making any attempt to explain.

 

What the press release from the IFS actually says is:

Taking these tax and benefit changes as a whole, they have reduced the incomes of low-income households with children and the very richest households by the most as a percentage of income.

 

Now I listened to the BBC reports on this and they were saying that the poorest lost the most as a percentage of their income whilst the richest lost the most in cash terms….that is clearly not the whole truth and doesn’t represent what the IFS said.

Unremarkably the leftwing New Statesman also peddled that line:

The report, by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), suggests that the coalition’s tax and benefit changes have cost the average family more than £1,000 a year. It also adds that the richest tenth have lost out significantly in cash terms, though not as a percentage of income.

 

In one way that is true but only if you selectively omit certain facts and the picture changes if you note that the Coalition tax and benefit changes would have calculated in the effects of legislation by Labour that kicked in just prior to them taking power when working out how to change the system…as the IFS report tells us….

Low-income working-age households have lost the most as a percentage of their income from tax and benefit changes introduced by the coalition, mainly as a result of benefit cuts. However this changes if we include in our analysis the tax rises introduced immediately before the coalition came to office (the first element of the fiscal consolidation that began in April 2010): the richest households have lost the most both in cash terms and as a percentage of income from the overall tax and benefit changes that have taken place since the beginning of 2010.

 

If the richest are already being hit hard then there is less need to put the boot in even more…they have lost the most both in cash terms and as a  percentage of income.

The BBC’s reports are true up to a point and yet not the whole truth…it is an important omission that distorts the effect of the government’s tax and benefits policies completely, and in favour of Labour.

And as this subject, inequality, the poor suffering more than the rich, we’re not in this all together, is one of the main planks of the Labour election campaign it is important that the BBC doesn’t make such careless ‘mistakes’ when reporting such stories…or it might look as if they are just a PR outfit paid and bought for by their Labour chums.

Champagne already on ice?